King Ottokar's Sceptre

The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who travel to the fictional Balkan nation of Syldavia, where they combat a plot to overthrow the monarchy of King Muskar XII.

Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with Land of Black Gold until Le Vingtième Siècle's forced closure in 1940, while the series itself became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition.

In 1947, Hergé coloured and redrew King Ottokar's Sceptre in his distinctive ligne-claire style with the aid of Edgar P. Jacobs for Casterman's republication.

Having discovered a lost briefcase in a Belgian park, Tintin returns it to its owner, the sigillographer Professor Hector Alembick, who informs the reporter of his plans to travel to the Balkan nation of Syldavia.

Tintin evades death, and heads to the capital city of Klow in a car carrying the opera singer Bianca Castafiore.

[4] Leaving the car to evade Castafiore's singing, Tintin is arrested and survives another assassination attempt before heading to Klow on foot.

Tintin finally succeeds in personally warning the King about the plot and they both rush to Kropow Castle, only to find that the sceptre is missing.

[6] With the aid of Thomson and Thompson, who have recently arrived in Syldavia, Tintin discovers how the conspirators smuggled out the sceptre from the Castle and pursues the thieves, first by car and then on foot across the mountains.

It reveals that the plot has been orchestrated by Müsstler, a political agitator who runs both the Syldavian Iron Guard and the Zyldav Zentral Revolutzionär Komitzät (ZZRK), a subversive organization which intends to have Borduria invade and annex Syldavia.

King Ottokar's Sceptre was not the first Tintin adventure to draw specifically on contemporary events; Hergé had for instance previously made use of the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria as a political backdrop for the setting in The Blue Lotus.

[17] Reportedly, the paper, by Lewis Fry Richardson and entitled "General Foreign Policy", explored the nature of inter-state conflict in a mathematical way.

[25] Hergé adopted the basis of Borduria's false flag operation to take over Syldavia from the plans outlined in Curzio Malaparte's Coup d'État: The Technique of Revolution.

[29] Syldavia's mineral rich subsoil could be taken as a reference to the uranium deposits found under Romania's Carpathian Mountains – later to be mentioned directly in the eventual Destination Moon.

[37] The United Kingdom also bore at least one influence on Syldavia, as King Muskar XII's carriage is based on the British Royal Family's Gold State Coach.

[44] King Ottokar's Sceptre introduced the recurring character of Bianca Castafiore to the series, who appears alongside her pianist Igor Wagner.

[47] After the conclusion of King Ottokar's Sceptre, Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with Land of Black Gold until Germany placed Belgium under occupation in 1940 and forced the closure of Le Vingtième Siècle.

[40] Harry Thompson described King Ottokar's Sceptre as a "biting political satire" and asserted that it was "courageous" of Hergé to have written it given that the threat of Nazi invasion was imminent.

[55] Ultimately, he deemed it one of the best three Tintin adventures written before World War II, alongside The Blue Lotus and The Black Island.

[56] Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline believed that the story had the atmosphere of Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow, with "added touches" from the films of Erich von Stroheim and Ernst Lubitsch.

[57] They compared the pace of the latter part of the story to that of Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones films before noting that despite the "horrors of the real world" that are present with Borduria's inclusion, they do not interfere in "the pure escapist nature of the adventure".

[57] Michael Farr opined that the adventure has "a convincingly authentic feel" due to the satirical portrayal to Nazi Germany, but that this was coupled with "sufficient scope for invention" with the creation of Syldavia.

[59] Literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès of Stanford University asserted that the inclusion of the Iron Guard evoked Colonel François de La Rocque's Croix-de-Feu.

[60] Literary critic Tom McCarthy identified several instances in the story that he argued linked to wider themes within the Adventures of Tintin.

[65] It was also adapted into a 1991 episode of The Adventures of Tintin television series by French studio Ellipse and Canadian animation company Nelvana.

The Anschluss : cheering crowds greet the Nazis in Vienna
The Bosnian town of Mostar (pictured c. 1890-1900) has been suggested as a likely influence on Hergé's depiction of the Syldavian village.
Hergé biographer Benoît Peeters (pictured, 2010) felt that King Ottokar's Sceptre showed "a political maturity". [ 26 ]